Indestrucible
by Fae Faythe
Summary: She didn't mean to land on Earth. It was an accident, and fault machinery. But with General Zod's attack on Earth, she knows that she isn't the only Kyrptonian stranded on the tiny planet, and certainly isn't the only one who's indestructible.
1. Prologue

2002. Earth.

* * *

The asteroid was unprecedented, and Doctor Norbert Roberts should know. As NASA's top astrological physicist, he had long since plotted and tracked all of the incoming space matter that would pass anywhere near Earth.

"Holy shit," the doctor said to himself, squinting at the diagrams on the computer through his glasses. They called comets and asteroids "bogeys" for their possibly devastating after-effects, and this one was coming in hot. It had came out of nowhere and was moving faster than the gravitational pull of the planet allowed. Almost like it was being propelled…like it was _flying_. "Get everyone down here." Roberts said into a microphone. His message rang through the whole of the compound and within minutes people flooded into the main control room. Roberts never called people in during his watches at night; he never had before. The man was brilliant but had barely enough social graces to get by.

"What the hell is that?" one of the younger scientists asked, his eyes round as he looked at the data display. "It looks like..."

It looked like a spaceship.

None of them would say it, but they were all thinking the same. The bogey didn't look like it was falling, and its trajectory was unlike any celestial object that had traveled in the solar system before – as far as they knew, at least.

"Find out where it's going to land," one of the senior officers barked. Almost immediately they had their answer: The bogey was headed to the South China Sea, and there was no way it would miss. The younger scientist postulated the impact could and most likely would cause a tsunami.

"Get the Pentagon on the phone."

* * *

Within exactly forty-two minutes, what had been Roberts' unlikely discovery had the leaders of the free world on edge. The Chinese government hadn't been warned yet – no one was picking up at the embassy. But the soldiers and technicians at the Pentagon had other problems: The bogey was too big and moving too fast for them to shoot it out of the sky. Aside from that, it had started to change flight patterns. Every time a new one emerged the scientists calculated its target but it was making changes faster than they could project its trajectory. It was almost like...

"It knows we see it." Roberts said quietly. "It's avoiding us."

"What was that, doctor?" one of NASA's commanding officers, a bullish man named McCoy, said, whirling on him. Roberts shrank back, suddenly fascinated by the control room's linoleum floors.

"It's not an asteroid, it's a ship." Roberts mumbled, his eyes darting back and forth, hopping from the readouts to the multiple protected trajectories.

"You've got to be kidding me," the McCoy snapped, rolling his eyes.

"Does any of your men have a theory?" a soldier from the Pentagon said, having seen the exchange between the two men via the video feed open between the Pentagon and NASA.

"No, sir," McCoy said immediately.

"Isn't that the man who spotted the bogey in the first place?" the soldier said.

"Yes," Roberts said, louder than anyone had ever heard him speak before. "I-I am the one who saw t-the bogey. M-my name is Doctor Norbert Roberts."

"Then speak up, doctor," the soldier said, "because we need all the ideas we can get at this point."

"I-I don't think that's a bogey," Roberts said. "It's using tactical evasive maneuvers, smart…brilliant evasive maneuvers, l-l-like a-a…"

"Like a what, doctor?" the soldier said evenly. "A spaceship? Are you saying that a goddamn spaceship is about to collide into the eastern hemisphere?"

"I...I think I am, sir," Roberts stammered, his voice growing louder. "You military people have planes that know when they're being targeted, right? And the plane's defensive strategy programs come into effect and it makes evasive maneuvers."

"What's your point, doctor?"

"M-my p-point is," Roberts said, staring at his boots, "no celestial object travels like that."

"Doctor, what you're suggesting is insane, you know that? Absolutely insane!"

"But do you know what travels in those evasive patterns?" Roberts plowed on, as if he hadn't heard.

"_Sir_!" Roberts didn't know if it was a soldier or scientist who shouted the word but something in his voice made everyone within earshot stand still and listen. "The bogey...it's..." The voice petered out.

"Spit it out!"

"It's gone sir!" the man who'd shouted said. "The bogey's gone." Roberts' huge eyes blinked through his glasses, peering at the screens. "It's just…gone."

"Check everything!" the soldier ordered.

Back at NASA, the scientists were doing the same. It was true: The bogey, the asteroid, the ship, whatever it was, was gone. Like it had never been there in the first place.

"That's impossible..." Roberts murmured. Officer McCoy, however, snorted.

The Pentagon classified the incident and made every soldier and scientist at both bases sign a confidentiality agreement. Doctor Roberts was fired from his position at NASA for "causing undue panic," stripped of his doctorate and credentials, and made out as a conspiracy theorist in scientific circles.

But he was right the whole time. The "asteroid" _was _a spaceship; one that _was _detecting the government's attempts to track it and putting pre-programmed evasive maneuvers into play. And it did land in the South China Sea, albeit south of where the scientists had guessed. Though slightly damaged, the unmanned ship managed to land safely and without causing too much disruption to the locals – they thought the seismic activity brought on by the ship's landing was a small earthquake, nothing more.

And though it was unmanned, the ship carried a very important cargo – a living one. She didn't mean to land on Earth. Her destination was much farther away – more distant than the tiny planet she had landed on. She wasn't scheduled to wake up until she had reached her destination. The icy chamber, which had kept her body preserved during her journey through space, couldn't be opened until that condition was to happen.

And so, the alien girl continued to sleep, dreaming of the new world where she would soon wake in, as she drank the nutrients from the earth's yellow sun.


	2. Chapter 1

2013. Earth.

"Hey, Scrap!" I don't acknowledge the voice, and am sincerely getting sick of that nickname. I know who's calling me. His name is Bruce, but I'm choosing to ignore him, like I ignore most people. "Yo, didn't you hear me?" I did. I hear everything, but I don't say anything to him. I've got headphones lodged firmly in my ears and a lit cigarette lodged even more firmly between my teeth. It would seem off if I could hear him through the blasting music.

"You shouldn't smoke," the automated voice chimes in my ear, switching off the music. My ship. Along with the nickname "Scrap," I also regret ever giving my ship a voice. She nags.

"The fact that you know I'm smoking is frightening," I snap. Bruce taps my arm and then his watch. Our lunch break is over. I wave my iPhone at him. Humans, I don't understand why, usually take phone-waving as a sign to go away.

"You're always smoking. Go back to work."

"Stop calling me at work." I retort, but by then, the music has started playing again. I yank the headphones out of my ears and stand, meeting Bruce's glare. He's taller than me, but not by much. "Can I help you?" I ask coolly. Bruce and I are partners on the construction site where we both work, an arrangement that makes neither of us happy.

"You're five minutes over the break," Bruce says stiffly. "And the boss said he didn't want any lit cigarettes on the worksite." I blow a smoke ring at the ground and grind the stub under my heel. "Those things'll kill you, you know." Bruce reminds me as we ride the lift up thirty stories to the top of the scaffolding.

"Kill you maybe," I say. "I don't plan on dying." Cigarettes can't kill me any more than a bullet will. Or falling off of a tall building, or being burned alive. I've died lots of times. Something about this world changed me. It's so different than my own…or how my home-world used to be, that is. It was destroyed years ago. The only time I've ever almost died in earnest was when I woke up for the first time. I wasn't supposed to land here, and the air nearly killed me. I wasn't prepared for its composition or its thinness and for weeks it was all I could do to keep breathing. Since then there have been other…changes.

"'Course you don't, Scrap." I grind my teeth. I hate that nickname. You put up your hair with a metal rod _once _and they name you for life. It doesn't help that my hair is thick and overlong and refuses to stay short, no matter what I do to it. "The way you act." I ignore that comment. We're almost to the top of the scaffolding anyway. I requested working on the top of the building. Bruce, I didn't request, but management told me that "there was no way in hell" I was going up that high alone. I had to swallow that, however unwillingly, because I doubt my superiors would appreciate being told that I could _launch_ myself off of the building and walk away from it. A building crew is an unusual place for a woman to work here on Earth, but ever since…ever since The Invasion, crews have been sprouting up all over Metropolis, all desperate for warm bodies. Almost a quarter of the city had been decimated when the world engine had tried to turn it into Krypton. Honestly, I don't understand the appeal. There was a reason I left.

"So where you from, Scrap?" Bruce asks as we hammer and drill away.

"Not here," I answer curtly, one headphone dangling out of my ear. Ambient noise helps me focus on what's in front of me, instead of allowing all of my senses to go haywire. I really don't want to see the thirtieth floor of a building half the city away. Besides, if I don't concentrate, I might put my fist through concrete again.

"Yeah, you don't seem like a city kind of girl." What do I seem like then? Does he know anything, or is the human just speculating? I keep my lips pressed together, focusing on my work. "The whole world's been on edge since that whole Invasion business. And this Superman guy…Superman, they're calling him. The alien," he clarifies, seeing my confused look. "The one that stayed." Superman. I don't like that name, I decide on the spot. It's very human. I know him by a different name: Kal-El. The whole world heard Zod's broadcast, but none of them seemed to pick up on his name. The one he told me was different, though.

_"Hey, hey. Big Blue. Stay with me, okay? Your name, tell me your name."_ The explosion from the world engine had sent him flying, and the Kryptonian atmosphere that it had been creating robbed him of his powers. I had thought that he was dead, and I remember my voice being thin with panic.

_ "Clark. I'm Clark Kent." _Zod had said that he'd been harbored here his whole life. It doesn't surprise me that he is more used to his human than Kryptonian name.

_"Okay Clark. Clark, stay with me. Don't close your eyes. Do you hear me? Don't close your eyes."_

_ "Who…who are you?" _I hadn't wanted to give him my name. I don't give anyone my real name, but I made an exception.

_"Kaisa. My name is Kaisa."_

_ "You're one of them." _He had shrunk away from me then, bleeding everywhere and dying, as if I would suddenly try to kill him. I don't think I could've made his condition worse if I tried.

_"One of _us_. You're like me. We've both been hiding here, and neither of us wants to see this world die. And the only one fit to save it is the one with "hope" plastered on his chest. So get your superhero ass in gear because you're not dying today."_

"If you ask me, they should've locked him up when he killed the last of the aliens for them." Bruce goes on, oblivious to the fact that I'm lost in my own mind. "But I guess the super-strength would make that kind of difficult."

"He saved the planet," I say, finally joining the one-sided conversation. "This world would be decimated if he hadn't stopped my…the aliens." I curse myself for the slip, but Bruce is too involved in his own internal monologue to notice that I almost called the invaders 'my people.'

"How do you know that it wasn't just a plot to gain our trust and then screw us over later?" Bruce challenges.

"Why would he do that?" I return. "He almost died saving you all." Bruce looks at me oddly.

"He saved you too, you know. If he saved any of us at all." I don't answer that. I need to get my anger under control. I put both headphones in and crank the music as loud as it will go, pointedly ignoring every attempt Bruce makes to strike up conversation again. It isn't like me to defend my own kind. Most of us weren't worth defending. We were a lazy, greedy people, who thought nothing of using our own planet's core as an energy source until it destroyed the planet. I wasn't there when the planet burned. I had left years before, but my ship managed to siphon the information from the Kryptonian databases before everything was destroyed. She's the only thing that holds the whole of my world's history now. My little ship, the last library of Krypton. Not that I spent much time in libraries even while I was there. The citadels were made for the thinkers to inhabit, and I was born for something else entirely.

Once again, I am wrenched out of my thoughts, but not by Bruce this time. This time, it's the screaming of metal on metal that gets my attention. I hear screams from below and the platform under my feet sways dangerously. I blink and all the layers of my vision filter in. I see through metal and concrete, skin and bone. And I see the problem: Two beams have cracked apart at the very bottom of the structure. The whole scaffolding is going to come down, with Bruce and I riding on top. My partner screams, his arms pin-wheeling as he tries to keep his balance. For a split second all the years of keeping myself hidden, keeping my abilities from being noticed rush back to me and I do nothing. And then that second ends, and I grab Bruce's hand and haul him back onto the platform. He stares at me. He never saw me move. The scaffolding creaks again. The only solid ground it the roof – ten stories up. _Shit_, I curse, pulling Bruce onto my back before I bend my knees and leap straight upward.

"How the hell…?" Bruce has the presence of mind to murmur when I dump him onto the roof.

"Don't move." I snap, leaping into the air again. This time, though, my destination is downward. If I can stabilize the two broken beams, or at least keep them steady for long enough, maybe the whole thing won't crumble.

I don't like _ifs_.

I land hard on the pavement, hard enough to crack the concrete. Several passerby stop and stare. One woman screams. I pay them no mind, my attention solely focused on keeping the temporary structure from falling on top of me. I find the break easily and press it together, the steel and metalwork grinding beneath my hands.

"Please work," I mutter to myself, inhaling deeply. I've never been good at this, but nothing spurs improvement more than dire circumstances. The back of my throat tingles and suddenly goes dry as I exhale a pillar of flame onto the two beams. The fire washes over my hands but I don't feel a thing. I never have before. The metal begins to glow red-hot before melding together. Another exhale cools the molten metal and when I take my hands away, the beams are sealed together, and stronger than ever. A crowd has gathered by now. Not good, not good at all.

"She's one of them." I hear the whisper and I bite my lip to keep from swearing aloud. It doesn't matter now. They've seen me. All of them. I've had slip-ups before, but never on this big a scale. Part of me wants to run away, so fast that none of them will see me. The other…what's the human expression? _Go big or go home_.

I stride through the crowd and the humans pass for me, all of them wide-eyed. I know who I'm looking for: The only person on the crew responsible for the building of the scaffolding.

"Blake!" I snarl, the word punctuated by wisps of flame. The crew manager is the only one who inspected the rigging before we started working. I should've known that the cheap bastard hadn't paid for the right materials. He was the one who recruited me without asking for references or working papers. Humans never do that.

When the manager doesn't reveal himself, I bull my way through the crowd until I find him.

"Don't touch me, you freak!" I don't cringe at the insult, but grab the man by the nape of the neck and throw him down at the foot of the crowd. Camera lenses and wide eyes gaze back at me.

"This man, who was supposed to be helping to rebuild your city, stole money from his company and used cheap materials. He almost killed almost thirty people." I kick him towards them, lighter than he deserves, but still hard enough to make him wince. "Go crazy." _Now_ I run.

* * *

"I burned another alias today," I say sullenly, shaking the water out of my hair.

"I know," my ship replies as her floors absorb the water. I've been storing her underwater to try and stay inconspicuous. Humans are more interested in space than in their own oceans, and know next to nothing about either. "You're famous." A holographic screen materializes, displaying a fuzzy phone-camera video of my little experiment in welding. I need to add 'giving my ship a voice' to my list of regrets. "The most prudent course of action would be to leave the city." I know that. I also know that I'm not leaving. Kal-El is here. Or Clark Kent, as he calls himself here. He hasn't left the city. I haven't sought him out and won't, but instinct drives me towards my own kind.

"Noted," I say, tying my dark hair up.

"Ignored you mean."

"Yes." I'll find a new name and a new job, but I'll stay in the city. Maybe I'll run through a skin graft and make myself a new face, now that mine is plastered all over the television. I quickly disable the holo-screen. Whatever the humans are saying about me, I don't want to hear it. I won't leave the city, but something tugs at my gut, a soldier's intuition. This isn't over. Whatever I started when I saved Kal-El, it's not over yet. Not even close.


	3. Chapter 2

It's been almost a month since the incident, and the video of my little stunt has slowly stopped circulating. The police, the FBI, Interpol, they're all still out looking, but the public has lost interest. I found a new job working at the Metropolis police department. Though my ship argued against it, but I'm privy to more information than what I could find out on my own. My entire job description is to go through sensitive and confidential files, so no-one bothers me when I poke around. Besides, with the holographic graft over my face, I am a completely different person, although getting used to bleach-blonde hair and brown eyes was difficult. Trying not to look startled whenever I catch a glimpse of my changed facial-structure is a chore as well, but I'm coping.

"Mary, I need these files organized by the end of the day, okay?" Mary, that's my new name. Mary Blanchard.

"Yes, Sargent," I say, taking the enormous pile of manila folders off of his hands. "What's all this for?" I ask.

"The FBI called this morning. Damn G-Men want all of our information about the Invasion, and some building company that was shut down about a month ago. They think that this Superman character has a friend, and they don't like it." He pauses. "I don't like it either. One alien on this planet is bad enough. And if those teenager photographers didn't Photoshop the videos, this one can breathe fire. Anyway, if you could get those sorted, I'd be grateful." I nod stiffly, and the policeman moves away.

"You get all that?" I mumble in my own language, pressing one headphone into my ear. The ship hacked into the station's security system before I started working here; she sees and hears what I do.

"Affirmative."

"I need to know everything that they know. All of it. I need it now."

"Is that Cantonese?" My head snaps up.

"No." I say shortly, eying the bald man standing in front of my desk. He smiles at me. I don't like his smile. "It's not." It's a dead language that was spoken by an alien species that I just happen to be a part of. "Can I help you Mr…?"

"Alexander Luthor," the man says, extending a hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you." I don't return the pleasantry. There's something off-putting about this man, something I can't seem to place. Maybe it's the baldness. He's still young; humans his age still have hair. "And I could've sworn it was Cantonese," he persists.

"_It wasn't_," I say, replying in the Chinese dialect. Kryptonian may sound similar, but the languages have no connection.

"_But you do speak it,_" Luthor replies in kind. I blink at him, surprised. "You have an exceptional accent. Did you live abroad?"

"No." I've always had a knack for languages, besides human speech is easy compared to Kryptonian dialects. "Can I help you. Sir?" I add as an afterthought, remembering that I'm supposed to be polite to the people who come in. In most of the odd jobs I've worked, no one cared if I was snappish and sullen.

"Yes, forgive me for wasting your time. I see that you have a lot of work to," he gestures to the pile of folders on my desk. It's good to know that he can see. "I'm looking for a Mary Blanchard." I tense only slightly. Mary Blanchard didn't exist until two weeks ago. What does he want with a woman who isn't real?

"That would be me," I say stiffly.

"Ah, I thought as much," Luthor says. He leans in towards me. "I don't mean to alarm you, but it seems that you don't exist. Not until a few weeks ago anyway."

"I'm sure you're mistaken," I say with as much restraint as I can. _Kill him_, a voice inside of me urges. _Kill him now_.

"Don't," the ship's voice chimes in my ear. "Your heart-rate spiked. Whatever you're thinking of doing, don't. You'll get caught again and we can't handle another publicity stunt if you want to stay in Metropolis."

"I'm sure I'm not. Now, as much fun as it must be going through police reports day in and day out, I think you're going to want to come with me." His smile is still there, but there's something predatory behind his eyes. I prefer that to his smile. Predatory is something that I've dealt with my entire life, with and without my abilities. Predatory is something that I can handle. He can't hurt me, and if he thinks that he can, Mr. Alexander Luthor is in for a brutal surprise.

"Oh, Mary, so sorry I forgot to tell you. Mr. Luthor asked to borrow you today. Hope you don't mind," another secretary, Donna Marks, said cheerfully. Luthor smiles.

"Looks like it's settled," Luthor says, extending a hand. "Shall we go, then?"

* * *

"You're not one for conversation, are you?" Luthor asks pleasantly. I ignore hi, more interested in the briefing I'm getting on Luthor. The ship informs me that he is one of the richest men in the world. I supposed his car is nice enough, although the humans' metal machines all look the same to me. She calls it a 'Rolls Royce.' I don't care what it's called; it's a cage that I would very much like to twist into scrap metal, but any time my heart spikes, my ship is all too quick to remind me to keep my temper in check. "Listening to anything good?" he asks.

"Yes." I reply coolly, taking the headphone out and meeting his blue eyes with my disguised brown ones. My shortness is partially due to my displeasure with his company, but mostly because of this damned car. It's too small.

"Monosyllabic, I like it," Luthor says, never losing the genial tone, or the smile. "That allows me to do most of the talking. You know, it's my besetting sin, but I do love the sound of my own voice." Obviously. "So what is your real name?"

"Mary Blanchard," I say, keeping an eye on the car walls. They look closer than they were just a moment ago.

"You're good, but you're also lying," Luthor says. The car stops and the driver opens the door for me. I ignore his outstretched hand, blowing out of the vehicle only a touch too fast to be human. I couldn't breathe in there. "Here we are." The building we've parked in front of is massive, sprawling over grass and concrete.

"LexCorp?" I say aloud. He named the company after himself. Subtle.

"My place of business. This is one of them, anyway."

"And you're looking for a new secretary? Because if that's the case, I'd rather turn you down now and go back to my real job." Luthor blinks at me and then smiles that irksome smile again.

"As astounding as your secretarial prowess is, that's not why I want to talk to you," he says as we walk inside the enormous complex. He waves me in past security guards and other security personnel. I scan the walls and find them heavily fortified and spotted with cameras. Whatever he's doing in here, Luthor isn't just trading stocks. I almost stop dead when I realize that there are some walls I can't see through. They must be lead-lined. I have no idea why, but lead is the only human metal that's ever hindered my eyesight. "Please, sit," Luthor says when we finally make it to what I assume is his office. "Would you like a drink?" I stand and shake my head no. Luthor shrugs and pours himself a glass of scotch. I can't get drunk. There are times that I wish I could, but my metabolism processes alcohol too fast. It's unfortunate, because this planet underwhelms in most everything else but its ability to get someone well and completely intoxicated.

"Mr. Luthor," I start after a long silence. This man is making me twitchy. This whole complex is making me twitchy, especially because I can't see what's behind several doors.

"Please, call me Lex," he says, cutting me off.

"Lex," I practically spit the word. "If all you're going to be asking me is my name, I'd like to go."

"Well here's the thing. I don't think that Mary Blanchard is your name."

"It is."

"The records you've falsified are very good, I'll give you that. But you did make one mistake. Mary Blanchard owns property."

"I do have to live somewhere, Mr. Luthor," I say coldly.

"Yes, but the property you own is not suitable for living. Forgive the intrusion, but I did check it out. You live in an abandoned building by the wharf. That's not a place for a woman to sleep at night." I grind my teeth. The bastard's been following me. It's a good thing I didn't accept a glass from him or I'd have crushed it into pieces already.

"The conditions in which I keep my home are my business."

"Very true, but it hasn't been your home for long, has it? In fact, this particular wharf-side building was owned previously, by a certain woman who worked in construction who's made quite the splash in local media." Luthor smiles again. He has me and he knows it. Every part of me screams to silence him and silence him now, but there are too many cameras. _If you want to stay here, you need to suffer this_, I tell myself. I don't want to listen. "Do you have anything to say?"

"No. I don't." I growl, taking three steps towards him. "Except for this: I don't know who you think you are, Mr. Luthor, but if you're smart, you'll drop this." The threat is there, it's real, and part of me desperately wants to act on it. When he doesn't answer, I turn towards the door and pause. Only for a second, just long enough to heed the instinct beaten into me from years of combat training. I spin, faster than I should, but only fast enough to catch Luthor's hand before he can stick a letter-opener in my back. I twist his wrist hard enough to head a _crack_ and stomp on the would-be weapon when it falls to the ground.

"Mr. Luthor!" Three hulking men burst into the room, all toting guns under their jackets. One of then spies the letter opener and sees his boss clutching his now very broken wrist. "Are you alright, sir?" I roll my eyes. Stupid men ask stupid questions.

"I am perfectly alright," Luthor promises. He won't be if he attacks me again. "You may go." He turns to me when his goons are gone. "You have very good instincts."

"Military family."

"Oh, no, I meant that you held back very well. I think you very much wanted to hurt me, and you didn't. You're very good at playing human." Inhale, don't kill the bald human; exhale, don't kill the bald human.

"And now I know why you get the reputation for being insane," I snap. "Next time you attack me, I'm calling the police." This time when I turn on my heel, I know he won't try anything.

"And, just for the record, I like your old face better. Dark hair and light eyes are much more becoming than the guise you're wearing." I close my eyes, and walk on. My eyes stray to the camera in the corner and I inhale softly. When I breathe out, the air ripples with heat waves. The light on the camera flickers out and sparks fly.

I look back one last time. "You might want to get that fixed."


	4. Chapter 3

I don't go back to work. My nerves are fried and in this mindset, I could really hurt someone. I want to just speed away on my own two feet, but I know that Luthor will have men following me, so I take a taxi into the city.

Then I run.

"Where are you going?" my ship asks.

"Canada," I growl. "Meet me there." I don't get tired, I don't slow. I could run forever and I probably would, if not for that pesky ocean in my way. But when I finally skid to a stop, I am so far north that only seals are around to see me.

"What are you trying to do?" _Work out my intense anger-issues_, I think.

"Target practice," I say instead. It's a valid reason, too. I can barely contain my fire-breathing abilities and I need to brush up on fighting more than one opponent. That, and I really want to break something. Preferably Lex Luthor's shiny head, but that would be frowned upon. My ship neutralizes the gravity field in the immediate area and enormous boulders begin to rise up and out of the ground. This is a trick that I worked out long ago. Whatever the Earth's yellow sun has done to me, it scrambled my molecules pretty good. With a little bit of willpower and practice, I can make myself incredibly heavy or light, depending on the gravity. Which is why I stay on solid ground while the boulders rise into the air. It's an odd little trick, but useful if I ever get hit by a truck again. "Come on then," I say impatiently. A little jolt of electricity through the antigravity field and the boulders fly at me with stunning speed. I dodge the first one, just stepping aside and allowing it to collide with another. One of the boulders takes me unawares and smashes against my shoulder, sending me flying.

"Well done," the ship comments. I growl, leaping to my feet and rushing straight back into the fray. This time, I don't hold back, using every trick and tool I have in my arsenal. I move faster than eyes can follow, dodging and destroying boulders in turn. For every one I destroy, however, there are three more to take its place. The mêlée doesn't stop until there are no more boulders left in the ground. The last one flies at me and flame hisses through my mouth, scorching blue and white. The rock doesn't drop until it's red hot and I put my fist through it.

"Feeling better?"

"No." Fighting rocks isn't good enough. Rocks aren't smart and tactical. Rocks don't fight back. But I know what does.

"Please don't…" the ship warns but my whistle is already slicing through the air. Within seconds I hear the responding cry and a dark shape appears on the horizon. "Here we go," the ship mutters and I grin. A massive creature speeds towards me, slicing through the air with four dragonfly wings. As she gets closer her wolfish muzzle opens and she screams. On Krypton, we called them Winged Ones. They were sacred to my people, and once in a very, very long while, one would bond with one of us. Neera chose me, and when I came to Earth, she came too. On Krypton, Neera was something of a wonder; on Earth, she's a monster, so she stays north most of the time, or underwater with the ship. I don't get to see her as often as I would like, but she always comes when I call.

Impatient, I take a running start and throw myself skyward, meeting her in midair. We collide in a tangle of wings and limbs and fall back to Earth. Snow and debris fly as we hit the ground, creating a massive crater in the Canadian soil. Oops. But I don't pay much attention to that, more intent on the beast in front of me who's trying her hardest to chew off my arm. Neera lunges and I sprawl backwards, kicking my feet out when she's on top of me to send the Winged One flying. I understand why the humans would see her as something from out of a nightmare. She's enormous, for one thing. Much bigger than I am. Whatever the sun did to me, it changed her as well. Most of her kind were big enough to ride, but she's at least twice their size now, all wolfish body and four distinctly reptilian wings. And with her muzzle pulled back, baring teeth as long as my forearm, I can definitely see how she could be scary. Right now, however, she's just playing and so am I. Honestly, I don't know who would win if we were both actually trying, but I have a feeling that we'd tear each-other apart.

Neera lunges for me again and we tumble across through the snow and ice. After almost five minutes, I have the upper hand, until I freeze, and so does she. Something's different all of a sudden, something in the air. Neera's wings slowly unfold and she bares her teeth again.

"Come on," I say, something urging me forward. I put my hand on Neera's leg to calm her – my head barely reaches the top of her shoulder. The Winged One snarls but follows me forward, her black nose twitching at the air. I don't know what is compelling me to put one foot in front of the other, but it doesn't…feel malevolent. I can't explain it. In the end, I'm not the one who finds it, Neera is. One of her enormous paws taps something under the ice and then the ground starts moving beneath our feet. I swear and Neera leaps into the air and takes me with her. Something is rising out of the icy ground. No, not rising…_growing_. Whatever it is, it's not human, that's for damn sure.

"What the hell…" I murmur to myself and Neera screams her agreement. I drop off of her back and this time she screams in dissent. Now that whatever it is has stopped growing, the pull towards it is even stronger. From the ground, it looks like a fortress, like the ones we had on Krypton. It's completely made out of some kind of phosphorescent crystal that sparkles in the sunlight. It doesn't look like there's any way in, but when I get closer, two of the crystals shift apart to make an entrance. I pass through, but Neera hesitates, though the entryway is easily big enough for her. "You don't have to come," I say gently. The Winged One shrieks at me and flaps her wings, but then follows me in all the same. As soon as we're two steps in the door seals behind us.

"Fantastic," I growl, putting in my headphones, but there's nothing but static on the line. I'm cut off from my ship. That's not a good sign.

"Kal-El." A voice echoes off of the crystals, seeming to come from all around us.

"Close, but no cigar," I mutter. A hologram flickers to life in front of my eyes and Neera snarls. The sound echoes.

"Identify yourself," the hologram insists. I know him…I don't know how…but I do. Until it hits me: The symbol on his chest is the one that Kal-El wears. The symbol of the House of El, the one that means 'hope.'

"You're Jor-El," I say. He was older than me when I left, but not by much. While he went off to study at the citadels, I was knee-deep in combat training, day in and day out.

"His memories, his will. I am but a shade of the man he was. Identify yourself."

"Kaisa," I say after a long silence. "What is this place?"

"A haven," the hologram replies, "for Kryptonians lost on this world. For my son, originally, but it seems that he is not the only one stranded on this tiny planet." If holograms could give attitude, I swear Jor-El is mocking me from the grave. "Why are you here, Kaisa the Deserter? Why do you wear a false face?" I grind my teeth at that.

"I wasn't looking for this place," I say defensively. "I want nothing to do with you." I don't bother answering the question about my cosmetic choices. Jor-El had always struck me as a pompous ass when we were children. Good to know that death and the destruction of our planet hasn't changed that. "And don't call me that."

"It is what you were called," the hologram says, shrugging. "You left. Hence, deserter." Neera screams, sensing my anger, and I find myself wishing that the Jor-El in front of me is real so I can stick my fist down his throat. "I've always been curious as to the _why_ of that," Jor-El muses. "You were a ranking officer who might have been promoted to general in time, the youngest Krypton had ever seen. Then you left. Why?"

"You're the one with all the records, you tell me," I snap. I don't talk about my desertion. I've never looked for it in the Kryptonian databases because I don't want to know how I am remembered in the history of our planet. The punishment for desertion is death, so when General Zod, my commanding officer, launched his invasion of the planet, I didn't fight. I ran and I hid. I jumped into my ship and tried to put myself as far away as I possibly could. I got to the South China Sea when the world engine almost landed on top of me. That was when I knew that Zod wasn't just here looking for Kal-El, he was trying to make a new Krypton. Still, I didn't fight. I could survive on either planet, I rationalized to myself. I could fly under the radar like I did on Earth. The old order was gone, and no one would recognize me on this New Krypton.

Then I saw Kal-El, fighting the world engine and losing.

Then I fought. I remember seeing him flying – I can't fly, not as far as I know. I remember seeing the world engine's long metallic arms trying to force him out of the sky and I remember them winning. Neera had screamed as I leaped onto her back and we took off together. She tried to keep the tentacles off of Kal-El. I tried to blow up the engine. In the end, though, I don't know who destroyed it. I just remember the explosion sending me tumbling through the air. If not for Neera catching me, I could've ended up in worse shape than the wonderboy in Spandex. The world engine was making Earth more like Krypton, and with it, taking a good chunk of my abilities away from me. I retained my strength and speed, but I was as vulnerable as a human. We both were.

"My records show no indication of your motives," Jor-El says, cutting into my thoughts.

"Good, because it's none of your business." I don't like this place. It reminds me of home, and I left home for a reason. "Let me out." I order, all military command. The hologram inclines its head and the crystals move aside again. "Thank you," I spit. There's a look on the fake Jor-El's face that I don't like. I turn, and suddenly I'm face to face with a man in a very conspicuous red-and-blue suit. His blue eyes flash oddly for a moment and I know that he sees through the skin graft.

"Kaisa?" he says quietly.

"Hello, Kal-El," I reply. I whistle, and Neera roars so loud that the entire fortress shakes. Jor-El's hologram has flickered out of existence and offers no sage words of wisdom. Neera screams again and I use the distraction to sprint out of the crystalline cave before I jump onto her back and we both take to the air. _Why are you running? _Some part of me demands. Because that's what I've been doing for eleven years, I answer. Because old habits die hard.


End file.
